About Us

The Center for Peace and Security Studies (cPASS) aims to serve as a bridge to unite the efforts of existing peace security scholarship at UCSD and to develop new, externally funded research that applies cutting-edge social science to improve our collective understanding of how humans can best cooperate in an increasingly globalized and connected world, with rapidly advancing technologies.

The Center for Peace and Security Studies (cPASS), located at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), conducts rigorous, data-driven research on international affairs and U.S. foreign policy. The focus at cPASS is on new and emerging modes of interstate conflict. We are especially interested in how a more diverse set of actors and capabilities is likely to impact conditions of war and peace. Research at cPASS answers questions in a variety of areas by applying innovative thinking and diverse methodologies (experiments, deductive modeling, statistical analysis, case studies, “big data”) to traditional security issues made more dynamic and difficult by increased complexity. We emphasize a team-based, multi-method approach to research that combines qualitative and quantitative perspectives; the strongest insights come from integrative approaches. 

Recognizing the need to develop and sustain a research team with a diverse set of skills and backgrounds to pursue new initiatives for externally-funded research in the area of national and international security, the Vice Chancellor for Research at UCSD granted Dr. Gartzke permission to establish the Center for Peace and Security Studies in April 2016.